After James left, I felt very alone. Too ashamed to share what was going on with the people I was closest to, I turned to the only people who knew the truth – James’ friends and family.
The first people who found out about our split were James’ brother and sister-in-law, Matt and Cammy. The first night back from our trip to Chicago, James packed a bag and went to stay with them. They had been through their own share of marital strife in their ten years together, and were working through their differences in individual and couple’s counseling. The four of us sat down on a few occasions so they could try to help us work things out, but James was adamant that he was leaving. When he tried to explain his reasons, it became harder and harder for Matt and Cammy to stay neutral. It was clear they found his explanations and accusations as absurd as I did, and tried to no avail to convince him to give me another shot. In some ways I found our talks with them more therapeutic than our sessions with the professional therapist.
After our impromptu therapy sessions, I felt closer to Cammy than I did the rest of the time I had known her. She and her husband were pretty private people, and quiet to boot. I called her regularly, and she was able to offer me great insight into my estranged husband’s actions, as her husband was definitely same cut from the same cloth as his brother. The treatment the boys received growing up verged on (or perhaps actually reached) psychological and physical abuse, and this had a similar effect on the brothers.
James once recounted an incident in which his father locked the boys out of their Queens apartment in their underwear as punishment for some misbehavior. James’ father was the youngest of many sons, and in his native Philippines he was regularly chained to the fence in front of the house or denied food while his older siblings were not. James attributed his father’s treatment as some sort of retribution for, or reenactment of, these past abuses. Despite being aware of the causality of his father’s actions, James (along with his brother) was profoundly impacted by them.
James’ mother was no picnic either, having fully emasculated her husband and run her eldest son out of the house for dating a black woman, she was left with only James to rely upon her. Her apron strings were a bondage to which James was only too willing to submit, as it meant never having to be accountable for his actions. James’ relationship with his mother was clearly in sharp contrast to his brother’s lack of one. Yet Matt and James remained close over the years because they shared the fraternal bond built in their turbulent formative years.
Cammy commiserated with my anecdotes about James’ behaviors and treatment of me. James, Matt and their father were all born under the astrological sign of Aries, which accordingly makes them all very headstrong. This trait seemed to be evident in their relationships with each other. It is also said that the Aries’ motto is “Ready, fire, aim,” meaning that those under this sign are prone to action without forethought. It is this curse of the impulsive Aries that caused Matt to up and leave his familial home in the first place and stubbornly stick with that decision for the following decade. As an Aries myself, I can think of many instances (with James or otherwise) in which I wished I could take back words or actions. Certainly with James I said things that, had I thought about it first, I should have realized would wound him.
As I talked to Cammy, who was successfully navigating a difficult relationship with my husband’s brother, I began to have hope that James and I could reconcile our differences. At my lowest moments, she offered me support and suggestions. I began to naïvely run “if only” scenarios in my head.
If only I could get him to see how sorry I was. If only I could apologize enough. If only I could start being nice to him. If only I didn’t get riled up when he picked on me. If only I could learn which of my actions triggered his anger, I could refrain from them. If only I could lose weight. If only I stop drinking. If only we could hang out and start creating new, happy memories. If only he would come and hang out at the apartment. If only we could have sex. If only I could change. If only these things could happen, I could get him back.
Cammy was as hopeful as I was, and at the time she was all I had so I went on believing it was possible.
Then I discovered the other woman in James’ life, and that was the tipping point. I told Cammy, and she was surprised, but not shocked. It helped explain to both of us that a line had been crossed and James would not be coming back to me, no matter how many “if onlies” I actualized. It meant that while something I did (or didn’t do) may have made James want to leave, nothing I could do (or not do) would bring him back. I slowly came to realize that by marrying a narcissistic Eeyore like James, I had set myself up for failure. Nothing I could do would ever be viewed as supportive, kind or loving. At some point in our relationship I had broken his trust, and unable to come back from that, he allowed every perceived slight to compound until I was the enemy.
Upon understanding this, I finally felt ready to begin outing myself to my friends and family as a future divorcée. In part I had held out because I hoped I could keep our troubles secret until they blew over. That now clearly was not going to happen. Less than a year before I had proclaimed before my friends, family and, yes, even God that I would be with James until “death do us part” and I still had a difficult time admitting to everyone that neither of us were in fact dead. I told my city girlfriends first, a pair who I am close with but were not amongst those who stood up for me in the wedding and therefore had a bit more distance and objectivity. Soon I told a few more friends, and eventually my family found out (when I removed “married” from my Facebook status, sorry Mom!).
It shouldn’t have surprised me, but of course all of my family and friends were extremely supportive. James had been so toxic as to convince me my friends and family were not the kind of people who would be there for me. James was generally on his best behavior around my friends and family, so they were certainly staggered by my news. James’ friends, however, weren’t nearly as taken aback. They had seen James’ true self, especially the way he’d been treating me.
In the months between my twenty-ninth birthday and James’ decision to move out, his treatment of me became so blatantly abusive that even his best friends felt the need to reach out to me. James worked as a bartender at his best friend’s family restaurant on the weekends. Dennis and James knew each other from high school, and Dennis was James’ best man at our wedding. One night after their shift ended at the restaurant, the three of us went out to some bars, along with Dennis’ girlfriend Shelly.
On the way home I called in a pick-up order to our favorite late-night Chinese spot. When the four of us arrived back at our apartment with the food, James realized I’d ordered him a roast pork soup instead of the roast duck soup he’d requested. It was an honest mistake on my part as both were menu items he was likely to order, but it was an error that drove James into a rage. He began one of his typical rants about how stupid I was, how I didn’t care about what he wanted, and so forth. I offered to call the restaurant and have another soup delivered at my own expense and was on the phone trying to do so when he told me not to. He ate the other dishes he’d ordered, but didn’t touch the same soup he would have happily tucked into on any other night.
On another evening when the four of us were hanging out, Shelly pulled me aside and told me that Dennis had initiated a conversation with her about James’ treatment of me. The soup incident was just one example they’d seen, and they didn’t understand why he reacted so strongly. She wondered how I was holding up. I shrugged my shoulders and wrote it off, as I tended to at that time, as just James being James. In some ways I felt callous not taking his complaints seriously, but if I did drink his Kool Aid, it meant I was in fact a mean, stupid, uncaring, fat bitch who was not loved by her husband. It was easier to assume that these words, like so many uttered by an Aries, were in the heat of a passionate moment and forgotten in the next. However their concern touched me and reassured me that I was not crazy for thinking that James had become a bit unhinged.
I don’t know what Dennis and Shelly should when they found out James was leaving me. He failed to mention to them that he’d met someone else. He was upset with me when I told them as much myself. He claimed to be taking the high road by not badmouthing me to his friends and was upset that I was “gossiping” to them. My response was that it wasn’t gossip, it was the truth, and if he didn’t think he was doing anything wrong, why would he be bothered if his friends knew about it? And frankly, I don’t think it would have mattered if he had debased me to his friends. Their opinion of me was formulated, and they had witnessed first-hand how he behaved. He was only insulting their intelligence if they assumed they would not judge him for his actions
In the months following James’ departure, I kept in touch with his friends and family. Cammy would check in via text message every now and then. James’ friend José, whose bachelor party was when James met Jacinta, lived near our marital apartment. When I was moving out, he gladly came over with his wife to help carry a few heavy things out. While they were there I plied them for information about my ex-husband. José had little to offer, telling me that James had all but disappeared. José and Dennis had tried getting in touch with him, but James didn’t respond. Bruno, James’ accomplice at the bachelor party had similarly been absent. I could only assume that James was in part so wrapped up with his new girl that he didn’t have time for his old friends and in part that he was so ashamed by his actions that he didn’t want to face them. I felt bad for an instant that I had in some way broken up a ten year friendship, until I checked myself. James made his own bed, and now he was lying in it (with another woman).
The last time I spoke to James’ mother when she came to collect a few remaining things from the apartment, she reassured me I would always be her daughter and if I ever needed anything, or wanted to visit the Philippines, to give her a call. I can’t say the same is true of my family. I was talking to my brother recently, and he recounted a conversation he’d had with my father. The two were talking about how disappointed they were in James, and my dad said that if he ever saw James again he couldn’t be responsible for his actions. My brother said he agreed with my dad, and the two used words like “lynching,” “broken kneecaps,” and “tied up and tortured in the basement.” My dad is not the most outwardly affectionate man, but I never felt more loved by him then when I heard he would handily rearrange my pretty-boy ex-husband’s face on sight.
Similarly, none of my friends have any interest in reaching out to James to inquire how he is doing. While he may have played a victim with me, they certainly don’t see it that way. To them, he is a villain to whom karma will come full circle.
José’s wife and Shelly regularly reach out to me to say hello, and while we have not met up in person, their electronic messages reassure me that I am not in fact a mean person, as James would like me to believe. José’s wife and I share the same birthday and traded wishes for happy returns on the day. When Shelly had her birthday party recently, she invited me and reassured me that James was not invited. It may be petty, but I feel vindicated that in our divorce I was left with all of our shared possessions, all of our friends, and most importantly, my dignity while his prize was the freedom to be with his female Doppelgänger.
The irony is that as I was writing this, Shelly instant messaged me, saying how she and Dennis missed me and we had to get together soon. After a few volleys of catch-up, my curiosity got the best of me, and I enquired after James. She told me she had seen him a few weeks prior when he went by Dennis’ restaurant to invite them to a party James was having at his place in New Jersey. That’s right, the same guy who refused outright to move to New Jersey, where I wanted to live, because he claimed his commute would be too long now lives even further away then I would have even wanted to. Shelly went on to tell me that James had moved into Jacinta’s place, which was no surprise to me. It made perfect sense that instead of getting his own place, as he told me he planned to do when he left me, he would move in with someone else who, like I and his mother before me, would take care of him.
Right about now James is getting ready to celebrate one year together with Jacinta. In that time, it took me five months to mourn the loss of our relationship and another three months for my heart to heal enough to let me open it up to someone else. In the process, I have learned so much about myself and who the most important people are in my life. When faced with the choice, I feel like the people I cared about sided with me. With their support, I am finally feeling optimistic about my prospects and beginning to believe what they have been telling me:
“Everything happens for a reason.”
“You are better off without him.”
“You seem like you are in a good place now.”
In my life I always find exes coming out of the woodwork at the most random times, so it will probably be my luck that since I, like James, am now dating a New Jerseyan, I will run into him in a mall or something. I hope when that time comes I am wearing my hottest new size 6 jeans, with my amazing boyfriend on my arm, and a smile on my face. I will be able to look James in the eye as I brush by him, knowing that I am improving my life not because of him but in spite of him.
Showing posts with label narcissism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label narcissism. Show all posts
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Chapter 4: The Other Woman
James and I had hit a rough patch following (though not because of) the incident after our birthday party in April. We were fighting quite a bit, and James had begun regularly telling me that he didn’t love me anymore and that I was always mean to him. As I write this I am trying to remember what life was like at that time, but very little comes to mind. It’s almost as if my brain has blocked it out, like those people who have selective amnesia after a traumatic event.
I think I fooled myself into thinking everything would work out, because on the surface we had what seemed like an idyllic life. In December 2007 we had moved to Whitestone, a suburban-like area in Queens near La Guardia airport and Shea Stadium. James wanted to be closer to his job in Queen after a year of commuting from my Harlem apartment. Doubling my commute to an hour and a half was a sacrifice I was willing to make in exchange for the amenities of our new place. Our apartment had a backyard, and as winter turned to spring we began having regular barbeques for our friends. We would head over to the neighborhood Costco and pick up jumbo packs of Bubba Burgers. I had planted a little kitchen garden, and loved serving our guests roasted potatoes with the rosemary I grew or Caprese salad with tomatoes from my vines.
~ My Garden ~
I got a Queens Library card and started checking out books. James’ mother came to live with us for awhile before she retired and moved back to the Philippines. James would drive me to the subway on his way to work every morning and at night we’d come home and he would cook dinner. It was all so grown-up feeling, and normal and, well, suburban.
James would bring me home gifts, right up until the end, like little gnome for the garden (because I love the movie Amelie with its roaming gnome) or a pinwheel (I had once told him that when I was little my mom would let me get one at the checkout at Kmart if I had behaved on our errand). While I thought these gestures were signs that he really did love me despite his words to the contrary, maybe they were in fact to make up for the fact that his love had faded.
As much as I had been in denial as to how bad our relationship had gotten, by June I couldn’t deny it anymore. We were at a housewarming party for one of James’ friends and I admitted to the fiancé of another of James’ friends, Carlos, that things were pretty rocky. She had moved to New York from Chile to be with Carlos and was having a rough go of it. We commiserated on how tough relationships are. Later on that night, one of the party’s hosts invited me up to his bedroom to look at a sculpture he’d made. It occurred to me later that James was not at all bothered by this, whereas earlier in our relationship he would have been enraged with jealousy. It was a sign that he really just didn’t care anymore.
James and I went to Chicago to celebrate the Fourth of July with my family. As I mentioned before, he made it known while we were there that he was not happy about being there. He had wanted to stay in New York and shoot off fireworks with his friends. They had been talking about driving to Pennsylvania to get a trunk full of explosives. By mid-June they had still not made that trip, so I asked James if he wanted to come to Chicago with me. I was going either way, as I hadn’t seen my family since the wedding the prior fall. He agreed to go, and I purchased our tickets.
James told me that I “forced” him into going and that it was another example of how I never cared about what he wanted. He would also say that I never supported him. And he thought that I felt that I was smarter than him (Early in our relationship I joked to my friends that he was my arm candy because I thought he was so good looking, and he held that against me for the rest of our time together). In time I came to decide that all of his complaints stemmed from his narcissism, and I wondered if the diagnosis was accurate or just a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Thinking back to my vows to him, nothing I could say or do would be viewed as supportive. If something was amiss and I suggested a solution, he would see that as lack of support. It was a leap I did not comprehend. Why would you want to wallow in misery, when the opportunities for a solution were plentiful? For example, one Friday night I decided to stay in while James went out after his bartending shift with a couple of his guy friends. He called me from the bar to say that the money he earned that night (around $150) had been stolen out of his pocket.
My immediate reaction was to ask if he had inquired with the bartender, who was a friend of his, if anyone had turned it in. He said no.
I asked if he was sure he had taken it with him from the restaurant and was he sure he’d had it at the bar. He said yes, he definitely had it with him at the bar.
I then asked if he had retraced his steps or looked in the car to see if it just fell out of his pocket. He said no, and if it had fallen out at the bar one of “those assholes there” would have just taken it.
I asked if he wanted to file a police report. He said that wouldn’t do any good.
As I tried to help him he grew more and more frustrated and the phone call ended in an argument. I don’t know what I could have said to be more sympathetic. “Oh sorry, baby, that’s too bad” just isn’t the way I approach life. It is like the serenity prayer says:
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
I guess James would have felt that losing his money was something he was powerless to do anything about, whereas I would try to do whatever it took (especially when it was a simple thing like asking the bartender a question) to try to make the situation right. James continued to be mad at me the following day until he headed off to work. Imagine how my eyes rolled when he called me from the restaurant to tell me that he had, in fact, left his money clip there the night before and the owner had set it aside for him. One phone call, as per my suggestions, would have saved him (and me!) so much agitation.
At the suggestion of a friend, I watched the YouTube video of Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture. In it, the professor says that in this world there are two kinds of people: Tiggers and Eeyores. That line hit me instantly and intensely. It is one of those observations that is just right. I realized that I am most definitely a “fun-loving Tigger” and James was pretty much a “sad-sack Eeyore.” I have come to learn about myself that I have little patience or room in my life for Eeyores. I mean we all have our days to be down in the dumps, but the people who have an overall negative approach to life are really hard for me to relate to. It is such a drain to coddle them and deal with their dramas.
And there was plenty of drama with James. When he told me he was leaving me, while standing in the same yard we’d been married in just ten months earlier, it came as a huge shock to me. Of course I asked why, and he told me that he just didn’t love me any more, and probably never really loved me in the first place. He said that I coerced him into marrying him. He told me that marriage vows are just a contract which can be broken. And he told me that he could find someone better. The last statement he later denied, saying he meant he could find someone better for him, not better than me.
Recently, a guy I was dating sent me an e-mail to break things off. As one of the reasons why, he quoted Neela from the television show ER who said, “I think there is somebody more right for both of us.” Hearing that reasoning again was really upsetting. How many Mr. Wrongs to I have to go through before the right one comes along?
In our discussions he said that he (with his Bachelor’s in Psychology) had "diagnosed" me with Borderline Personality Disorder. When I looked it up, I couldn’t help but agree. I recently asked a friend if it sounded like my personality, and he replied that it sounds like everyone. But if I do in fact fit the BPD criteria, it would make sense that I would try to make something work that is not meant to be. I have long known that I have an extreme fear of abandonment. I can even pinpoint a singular incident as either the cause of this fear or the first time the fear became actualized.
In eighth grade we took a class trip to Washington DC. In an effort to keep track of one hundred pubescent students, the chaperones said we were to remain in our hotel rooms until they came to knock on our door to take us to the tour buses. The hotel’s corridor was shaped like a T and my room was at the intersection. In the morning, the chaperones were sitting outside my door, watching for teenagers skulking the halls. My roommates and I grew a little stir crazy and asked the teachers if we could come out of our room. After being reprimanded and denied our request, we settled onto the floor for a game of cards while we waited.
Eventually we heard the teachers knocking on the doors of the rooms down each hallway. And then it grew quiet. My friends and I were generally the goody-two-shoes types, so getting yelled at by the teachers was enough to scare us straight. They said we couldn’t come out of our room until the came for us, and so we waited. And waited. Finally we heard a knock at the door and an angry looking teacher stood there ready to take us downstairs. They had realized when they did the headcount on the bus that they were missing four students.
Walking on that bus and having the teachers and students stare at me like I’d done something wrong was mortifying and confusing. Were we being punished for acting up? And even despite causing a stir, the chaperones were able to so quickly forget all about us? From then on I knew that I hated being forgotten, ignored or abandoned.
So when James told me he was leaving me, it was the worst nightmare I could imagine. He packed up most of his clothes and moved into his aunt’s basement apartment. I insisted that we do counseling. The counselor we met with first was a little to rainbows and unicorns for us, we both needed a firm straight-talker. The next session we met with a woman who was much more in-your-face. She basically told me if James wanted to leave, and his mind was made up, nothing I could do would change that. We met with her twice and were not making much progress. I tried to get James to come around so we could talk about things more. I was in so much pain and in such shock that I needed to talk to someone. I couldn’t bring myself to tell any of my family or friends so James was it. The counselor told James that by continuing to see me outside of our sessions, he was giving me false hope. I went home that night feeling really alone, depressed and pessimistic.
When I arrived home, I sorted through the mail and opened up the phone bill. The two of us were on a family plan. Sprint cell phone bills list every incoming and outgoing call, and I was shocked to see hundreds of minutes of calls to a New Jersey number (528 minutes spread over 52 calls in 16 days). The calls had started on the 24th of June and continued to the end of the billing cycle on July 10. There were many calls made while we were in Chicago, at times when James said he was talking to his father. To put it in perspective, during the entire month shown on the bill, he called me for 205 minutes, his dad for 58, his mom for 8, his brother for 41, and his son for 2.
I stared in shock at the bill with my heart racing. I knew immediately what that mysterious number implied. When he said he thought he could find someone better (with or without the “for me”), he meant he already had. After a few glasses of wine to calm my nerves and get up the courage, I dialed the number, making sure mine was blocked. It went to voicemail, and the girl on the other line identified herself as “Jacinta.”
I was confused by this because one of James’ friends had a girlfriend with the same name, but I knew her phone number had a Long Island area code. I wondered if they’d broken up, Jacinta had moved to New Jersey and changed her number, and maybe she and James were just supporting each other in their respective breakups. I have the tendency to run scenarios in my head, as in this case, to give people (guys who don’t call when they say they will for example) the benefit of the doubt. But deep down I knew this scenario was far-fetched, and the horrible truth was that he was leaving me for another woman.
It also explained why James had suddenly been so eager to get a new phone with a different provider. Our family plan was with Sprint, which had been my provider for years. James resented me for “making” him switch, and would cite it as another example of how I wouldn’t let him do what he wanted and forced him into things. We had also been fighting about how I felt I was the responsible one who paid the bills and such, and that I thought he was too much of a mama’s boy. So, in an effort to claim some independence he got a phone whose bill he would be responsible for. And one whose call log I could not see. Neat trick there – make it seem like the change is him punishing me or be high and mighty, when in reality he was just trying to cover his tracks.
I held on to this newfound kernel of knowledge for the week until our next session. As I asked James if he could explain what I saw when I opened the phone bill, I began to feel lightheaded, the room swam in front of me and my whole body seemed to vibrate. His explanation came out in a very nonchalant manner. He’d met her in Atlantic City while at Carlos’ bachelor party. He was acting as wing man for his friend Bruno and Jacinta was the friend of Bruno’s conquest. His only other explanation was that she was “nice” which I guess stood in great contrast to how mean her perceived me to be. He tried to blame Bruno and me for his actions, and my response was “Neither of us stuck your dick in some Jersey slut.” At least now I had an explanation for why he suddenly made the decision to leave.
I ended up texting Jacinta to tell her James was married (to me) and that her friend should be wary of Bruno because he is a scumbag. She replied “Ok thanks.” Over the next couple months I could see that he was spending an inordinate amount of time with her. On the EZ-Pass statement there would be tolls listed for bridges and tunnels to New Jersey, about three times a week. I also gleaned from his credit card statements that he was also filling up his car with gas from gas stations in New Jersey on a regular basis. The fact that he could jump headfirst into a new relationship and just cut me out of his life was unconscionable to me, especially since I was still reeling from the shock and seriously depressed.
After I found out about the “other woman,” I was finally able to work up the nerve to start telling people what was going on in my life. I started out telling a couple of my close girlfriends, and they were shocked. But for the longest time I couldn’t bring myself to tell my parents. They had just shelled out so much money, and worked so hard to plan, my dream wedding. And now this. My mom had even had a dream in January of 2008 in which James and I were divorcing. She called me up the next morning and asked if everything was going okay between the two of us, and I reassured her it was. Little did I know that six months later all that would change.
My parents finally found out by accident. I wanted to change my Facebook status to not show any relationship status, even though I was still technically married. It was just too painful to see his name every time I logged in. I didn’t realize that when I changed the setting, it would pop up a note on everyone’s feed saying I was no longer married. When my mom logged into her account that day, she got the shock of a lifetime. As soon as I realized what had happened, I gave them a call. It was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. Despite the fact that my guilt and shame were subsiding in light of the whole cheating thing, I was still really upset that I couldn’t make my marriage work.
The saddest moment was when my dad told me how disappointed he was in James. He recounted that at the wedding he had told my new husband, “Take care of my little girl” and James shook his hand and replied “I will, sir, I will.” Even just writing that now is making me cry. I hate that I’ve disappointed everyone, especially all the people who came out for the wedding, bearing gifts.
In September of 2008, almost a year to the day after we were married under it, the weeping willow in my parent’s neighbor’s backyard was struck by lightning. When my mom told me I took it as a sign, and doubly so when I returned home for Christmas that year and the neighbors chose that week to have the remaining portion of the tree cut down and hauled away.
~ Sad Tree ~
The day after the tree was struck by lightning the symbolism became real, as that was the day James finally visited a lawyer to file for divorce (I only just realized this after comparing the dates of the divorce papers and the date my mom emailed me the photo. At the time James didn't know about the tree, and I didn't know he'd seen a lawyer). In the state of New York there is no uncontested divorce, so he had to choose the grounds for divorce from Abandonment, Three Consecutive Years Imprisonment, Adultery or Cruel and Inhuman Treatment. Since he was clearly the one who was cheating and leaving (and was the one of us who’d spent any time in prison), he was left with Cruel and Inhuman Treatment. Once I confirmed that him claiming I mistreated him would not come back to haunt me in any way, I signed the papers and was single once more.
I was still living in our marital abode as the lease did not expire until December. James was still paying his half of the rent (I guess he felt a lease is more binding than wedding vows). Just after the lease ended, James changed his Facebook status to “in a relationship.” I imagine he figured since his commitment to me was now officially over, he could go public with his girlfriend. When I saw the update, I also noticed that he had posted a picture of them together.
~ James & Jacinta ~
Seeing that picture, two things struck me. First, I don’t think he ever put a picture of the two of us as his profile picture. His photos would be of just himself or him with Jamie. Thinking about it, I decided that he probably didn’t think I was attractive enough to show off to the world. Yet this new girl was. This brought me to my second observation about her. She looks just like him! Narcissism is of course being like Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection. So it made perfect sense to me that James would fall for someone who could be his twin sister. I understand that the conventional wisdom is that we seek out the image of our parents in our romantic partners. However, both Jamie's mother and I look nothing like James, so who knows.
Over time he continued to post pictures of the two of them. I could tell one of them was taken at his office Christmas party, and I wonder how he explained bringing a different girl to the party when his wife had accompanied him to the company barbecue that summer. Eventually he “unfriended” me on Facebook, the EZ-Pass was returned, and his mail stopped coming to my address. It is nearly a year later and James is at last physically out of my life. It makes me a little jealous that he so seamlessly moved on to this new life while I am left to pick up the pieces.
I try not to be too jaded or cynical, but have only just begun really opening myself up to trusting someone with my heart again. And so far, that hasn’t really worked out so well for me. I have taken to heart Gloria Steinem’s words: “There are many more people trying to meet the right person than to become the right person.” Right now I need to focus on finding myself and not as much on finding my next beau. And as they say, he will probably fall into my lap when I am not looking (though truth be told, having a man on my lap right now would be just fine with me!)
If I had known back in the beginning of our relationship what I know now, I could have either A) Ended things before they turned ugly or B) Learned his triggers and how to best handle a situation with someone like him. I think choice B is overly optimistic. I have come to realize that while I am no way perfect, it was not a specific flaw in me that drove him away. It was this other thing, his narcissism, which was the third entity in our marriage, well before the other woman entered the picture.
I think I fooled myself into thinking everything would work out, because on the surface we had what seemed like an idyllic life. In December 2007 we had moved to Whitestone, a suburban-like area in Queens near La Guardia airport and Shea Stadium. James wanted to be closer to his job in Queen after a year of commuting from my Harlem apartment. Doubling my commute to an hour and a half was a sacrifice I was willing to make in exchange for the amenities of our new place. Our apartment had a backyard, and as winter turned to spring we began having regular barbeques for our friends. We would head over to the neighborhood Costco and pick up jumbo packs of Bubba Burgers. I had planted a little kitchen garden, and loved serving our guests roasted potatoes with the rosemary I grew or Caprese salad with tomatoes from my vines.
~ My Garden ~
I got a Queens Library card and started checking out books. James’ mother came to live with us for awhile before she retired and moved back to the Philippines. James would drive me to the subway on his way to work every morning and at night we’d come home and he would cook dinner. It was all so grown-up feeling, and normal and, well, suburban.
James would bring me home gifts, right up until the end, like little gnome for the garden (because I love the movie Amelie with its roaming gnome) or a pinwheel (I had once told him that when I was little my mom would let me get one at the checkout at Kmart if I had behaved on our errand). While I thought these gestures were signs that he really did love me despite his words to the contrary, maybe they were in fact to make up for the fact that his love had faded.
As much as I had been in denial as to how bad our relationship had gotten, by June I couldn’t deny it anymore. We were at a housewarming party for one of James’ friends and I admitted to the fiancé of another of James’ friends, Carlos, that things were pretty rocky. She had moved to New York from Chile to be with Carlos and was having a rough go of it. We commiserated on how tough relationships are. Later on that night, one of the party’s hosts invited me up to his bedroom to look at a sculpture he’d made. It occurred to me later that James was not at all bothered by this, whereas earlier in our relationship he would have been enraged with jealousy. It was a sign that he really just didn’t care anymore.
James and I went to Chicago to celebrate the Fourth of July with my family. As I mentioned before, he made it known while we were there that he was not happy about being there. He had wanted to stay in New York and shoot off fireworks with his friends. They had been talking about driving to Pennsylvania to get a trunk full of explosives. By mid-June they had still not made that trip, so I asked James if he wanted to come to Chicago with me. I was going either way, as I hadn’t seen my family since the wedding the prior fall. He agreed to go, and I purchased our tickets.
James told me that I “forced” him into going and that it was another example of how I never cared about what he wanted. He would also say that I never supported him. And he thought that I felt that I was smarter than him (Early in our relationship I joked to my friends that he was my arm candy because I thought he was so good looking, and he held that against me for the rest of our time together). In time I came to decide that all of his complaints stemmed from his narcissism, and I wondered if the diagnosis was accurate or just a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Thinking back to my vows to him, nothing I could say or do would be viewed as supportive. If something was amiss and I suggested a solution, he would see that as lack of support. It was a leap I did not comprehend. Why would you want to wallow in misery, when the opportunities for a solution were plentiful? For example, one Friday night I decided to stay in while James went out after his bartending shift with a couple of his guy friends. He called me from the bar to say that the money he earned that night (around $150) had been stolen out of his pocket.
My immediate reaction was to ask if he had inquired with the bartender, who was a friend of his, if anyone had turned it in. He said no.
I asked if he was sure he had taken it with him from the restaurant and was he sure he’d had it at the bar. He said yes, he definitely had it with him at the bar.
I then asked if he had retraced his steps or looked in the car to see if it just fell out of his pocket. He said no, and if it had fallen out at the bar one of “those assholes there” would have just taken it.
I asked if he wanted to file a police report. He said that wouldn’t do any good.
As I tried to help him he grew more and more frustrated and the phone call ended in an argument. I don’t know what I could have said to be more sympathetic. “Oh sorry, baby, that’s too bad” just isn’t the way I approach life. It is like the serenity prayer says:
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
I guess James would have felt that losing his money was something he was powerless to do anything about, whereas I would try to do whatever it took (especially when it was a simple thing like asking the bartender a question) to try to make the situation right. James continued to be mad at me the following day until he headed off to work. Imagine how my eyes rolled when he called me from the restaurant to tell me that he had, in fact, left his money clip there the night before and the owner had set it aside for him. One phone call, as per my suggestions, would have saved him (and me!) so much agitation.
At the suggestion of a friend, I watched the YouTube video of Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture. In it, the professor says that in this world there are two kinds of people: Tiggers and Eeyores. That line hit me instantly and intensely. It is one of those observations that is just right. I realized that I am most definitely a “fun-loving Tigger” and James was pretty much a “sad-sack Eeyore.” I have come to learn about myself that I have little patience or room in my life for Eeyores. I mean we all have our days to be down in the dumps, but the people who have an overall negative approach to life are really hard for me to relate to. It is such a drain to coddle them and deal with their dramas.
And there was plenty of drama with James. When he told me he was leaving me, while standing in the same yard we’d been married in just ten months earlier, it came as a huge shock to me. Of course I asked why, and he told me that he just didn’t love me any more, and probably never really loved me in the first place. He said that I coerced him into marrying him. He told me that marriage vows are just a contract which can be broken. And he told me that he could find someone better. The last statement he later denied, saying he meant he could find someone better for him, not better than me.
Recently, a guy I was dating sent me an e-mail to break things off. As one of the reasons why, he quoted Neela from the television show ER who said, “I think there is somebody more right for both of us.” Hearing that reasoning again was really upsetting. How many Mr. Wrongs to I have to go through before the right one comes along?
In our discussions he said that he (with his Bachelor’s in Psychology) had "diagnosed" me with Borderline Personality Disorder. When I looked it up, I couldn’t help but agree. I recently asked a friend if it sounded like my personality, and he replied that it sounds like everyone. But if I do in fact fit the BPD criteria, it would make sense that I would try to make something work that is not meant to be. I have long known that I have an extreme fear of abandonment. I can even pinpoint a singular incident as either the cause of this fear or the first time the fear became actualized.
In eighth grade we took a class trip to Washington DC. In an effort to keep track of one hundred pubescent students, the chaperones said we were to remain in our hotel rooms until they came to knock on our door to take us to the tour buses. The hotel’s corridor was shaped like a T and my room was at the intersection. In the morning, the chaperones were sitting outside my door, watching for teenagers skulking the halls. My roommates and I grew a little stir crazy and asked the teachers if we could come out of our room. After being reprimanded and denied our request, we settled onto the floor for a game of cards while we waited.
Eventually we heard the teachers knocking on the doors of the rooms down each hallway. And then it grew quiet. My friends and I were generally the goody-two-shoes types, so getting yelled at by the teachers was enough to scare us straight. They said we couldn’t come out of our room until the came for us, and so we waited. And waited. Finally we heard a knock at the door and an angry looking teacher stood there ready to take us downstairs. They had realized when they did the headcount on the bus that they were missing four students.
Walking on that bus and having the teachers and students stare at me like I’d done something wrong was mortifying and confusing. Were we being punished for acting up? And even despite causing a stir, the chaperones were able to so quickly forget all about us? From then on I knew that I hated being forgotten, ignored or abandoned.
So when James told me he was leaving me, it was the worst nightmare I could imagine. He packed up most of his clothes and moved into his aunt’s basement apartment. I insisted that we do counseling. The counselor we met with first was a little to rainbows and unicorns for us, we both needed a firm straight-talker. The next session we met with a woman who was much more in-your-face. She basically told me if James wanted to leave, and his mind was made up, nothing I could do would change that. We met with her twice and were not making much progress. I tried to get James to come around so we could talk about things more. I was in so much pain and in such shock that I needed to talk to someone. I couldn’t bring myself to tell any of my family or friends so James was it. The counselor told James that by continuing to see me outside of our sessions, he was giving me false hope. I went home that night feeling really alone, depressed and pessimistic.
When I arrived home, I sorted through the mail and opened up the phone bill. The two of us were on a family plan. Sprint cell phone bills list every incoming and outgoing call, and I was shocked to see hundreds of minutes of calls to a New Jersey number (528 minutes spread over 52 calls in 16 days). The calls had started on the 24th of June and continued to the end of the billing cycle on July 10. There were many calls made while we were in Chicago, at times when James said he was talking to his father. To put it in perspective, during the entire month shown on the bill, he called me for 205 minutes, his dad for 58, his mom for 8, his brother for 41, and his son for 2.
I stared in shock at the bill with my heart racing. I knew immediately what that mysterious number implied. When he said he thought he could find someone better (with or without the “for me”), he meant he already had. After a few glasses of wine to calm my nerves and get up the courage, I dialed the number, making sure mine was blocked. It went to voicemail, and the girl on the other line identified herself as “Jacinta.”
I was confused by this because one of James’ friends had a girlfriend with the same name, but I knew her phone number had a Long Island area code. I wondered if they’d broken up, Jacinta had moved to New Jersey and changed her number, and maybe she and James were just supporting each other in their respective breakups. I have the tendency to run scenarios in my head, as in this case, to give people (guys who don’t call when they say they will for example) the benefit of the doubt. But deep down I knew this scenario was far-fetched, and the horrible truth was that he was leaving me for another woman.
It also explained why James had suddenly been so eager to get a new phone with a different provider. Our family plan was with Sprint, which had been my provider for years. James resented me for “making” him switch, and would cite it as another example of how I wouldn’t let him do what he wanted and forced him into things. We had also been fighting about how I felt I was the responsible one who paid the bills and such, and that I thought he was too much of a mama’s boy. So, in an effort to claim some independence he got a phone whose bill he would be responsible for. And one whose call log I could not see. Neat trick there – make it seem like the change is him punishing me or be high and mighty, when in reality he was just trying to cover his tracks.
I held on to this newfound kernel of knowledge for the week until our next session. As I asked James if he could explain what I saw when I opened the phone bill, I began to feel lightheaded, the room swam in front of me and my whole body seemed to vibrate. His explanation came out in a very nonchalant manner. He’d met her in Atlantic City while at Carlos’ bachelor party. He was acting as wing man for his friend Bruno and Jacinta was the friend of Bruno’s conquest. His only other explanation was that she was “nice” which I guess stood in great contrast to how mean her perceived me to be. He tried to blame Bruno and me for his actions, and my response was “Neither of us stuck your dick in some Jersey slut.” At least now I had an explanation for why he suddenly made the decision to leave.
I ended up texting Jacinta to tell her James was married (to me) and that her friend should be wary of Bruno because he is a scumbag. She replied “Ok thanks.” Over the next couple months I could see that he was spending an inordinate amount of time with her. On the EZ-Pass statement there would be tolls listed for bridges and tunnels to New Jersey, about three times a week. I also gleaned from his credit card statements that he was also filling up his car with gas from gas stations in New Jersey on a regular basis. The fact that he could jump headfirst into a new relationship and just cut me out of his life was unconscionable to me, especially since I was still reeling from the shock and seriously depressed.
After I found out about the “other woman,” I was finally able to work up the nerve to start telling people what was going on in my life. I started out telling a couple of my close girlfriends, and they were shocked. But for the longest time I couldn’t bring myself to tell my parents. They had just shelled out so much money, and worked so hard to plan, my dream wedding. And now this. My mom had even had a dream in January of 2008 in which James and I were divorcing. She called me up the next morning and asked if everything was going okay between the two of us, and I reassured her it was. Little did I know that six months later all that would change.
My parents finally found out by accident. I wanted to change my Facebook status to not show any relationship status, even though I was still technically married. It was just too painful to see his name every time I logged in. I didn’t realize that when I changed the setting, it would pop up a note on everyone’s feed saying I was no longer married. When my mom logged into her account that day, she got the shock of a lifetime. As soon as I realized what had happened, I gave them a call. It was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. Despite the fact that my guilt and shame were subsiding in light of the whole cheating thing, I was still really upset that I couldn’t make my marriage work.
The saddest moment was when my dad told me how disappointed he was in James. He recounted that at the wedding he had told my new husband, “Take care of my little girl” and James shook his hand and replied “I will, sir, I will.” Even just writing that now is making me cry. I hate that I’ve disappointed everyone, especially all the people who came out for the wedding, bearing gifts.
In September of 2008, almost a year to the day after we were married under it, the weeping willow in my parent’s neighbor’s backyard was struck by lightning. When my mom told me I took it as a sign, and doubly so when I returned home for Christmas that year and the neighbors chose that week to have the remaining portion of the tree cut down and hauled away.
~ Sad Tree ~
The day after the tree was struck by lightning the symbolism became real, as that was the day James finally visited a lawyer to file for divorce (I only just realized this after comparing the dates of the divorce papers and the date my mom emailed me the photo. At the time James didn't know about the tree, and I didn't know he'd seen a lawyer). In the state of New York there is no uncontested divorce, so he had to choose the grounds for divorce from Abandonment, Three Consecutive Years Imprisonment, Adultery or Cruel and Inhuman Treatment. Since he was clearly the one who was cheating and leaving (and was the one of us who’d spent any time in prison), he was left with Cruel and Inhuman Treatment. Once I confirmed that him claiming I mistreated him would not come back to haunt me in any way, I signed the papers and was single once more.
I was still living in our marital abode as the lease did not expire until December. James was still paying his half of the rent (I guess he felt a lease is more binding than wedding vows). Just after the lease ended, James changed his Facebook status to “in a relationship.” I imagine he figured since his commitment to me was now officially over, he could go public with his girlfriend. When I saw the update, I also noticed that he had posted a picture of them together.
~ James & Jacinta ~
Seeing that picture, two things struck me. First, I don’t think he ever put a picture of the two of us as his profile picture. His photos would be of just himself or him with Jamie. Thinking about it, I decided that he probably didn’t think I was attractive enough to show off to the world. Yet this new girl was. This brought me to my second observation about her. She looks just like him! Narcissism is of course being like Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection. So it made perfect sense to me that James would fall for someone who could be his twin sister. I understand that the conventional wisdom is that we seek out the image of our parents in our romantic partners. However, both Jamie's mother and I look nothing like James, so who knows.
Over time he continued to post pictures of the two of them. I could tell one of them was taken at his office Christmas party, and I wonder how he explained bringing a different girl to the party when his wife had accompanied him to the company barbecue that summer. Eventually he “unfriended” me on Facebook, the EZ-Pass was returned, and his mail stopped coming to my address. It is nearly a year later and James is at last physically out of my life. It makes me a little jealous that he so seamlessly moved on to this new life while I am left to pick up the pieces.
I try not to be too jaded or cynical, but have only just begun really opening myself up to trusting someone with my heart again. And so far, that hasn’t really worked out so well for me. I have taken to heart Gloria Steinem’s words: “There are many more people trying to meet the right person than to become the right person.” Right now I need to focus on finding myself and not as much on finding my next beau. And as they say, he will probably fall into my lap when I am not looking (though truth be told, having a man on my lap right now would be just fine with me!)
If I had known back in the beginning of our relationship what I know now, I could have either A) Ended things before they turned ugly or B) Learned his triggers and how to best handle a situation with someone like him. I think choice B is overly optimistic. I have come to realize that while I am no way perfect, it was not a specific flaw in me that drove him away. It was this other thing, his narcissism, which was the third entity in our marriage, well before the other woman entered the picture.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Chapter 8: A Single Girl in Single Digits
One of the first things on my list of changes I wanted to make in going from nerdy to thirty was to lose weight. My list was comprised of many things that I told myself I was doing for me, but in reality many of them were to try to win back the husband I felt I was losing. My weight was the one thing that my image-conscious husband would get on my case about the most. His narcissism manifested itself in such a way that as he put on weight over time, he became self-conscious. Because he was insecure about his own appearance, he made himself feel better by belittling me. Or rather, not pointing out how little I was not.
Over time, his actions became increasingly hurtful. He would pinch the roll of fat around my midsection, make comments about my inactivity, and fight me on the foods I ate. One time, I grabbed a slice of individually-wrapped American cheese from the fridge, and he flipped out. He insisted that me eating cheese on its own as a snack was the cause of my gaining weight. It disgusted him, and from that point on he would comment any time I repeated the action. Sometimes I did it just to prove the point that I didn’t care if he thought I was fat.
But in reality, I did care. I have always cared. I came into the world a healthy seven pounds fourteen ounces and started packing on the weight from there. I was always a chubby kid. Perhaps it was the Midwestern meat-and-potatoes diet or the fact that I never really played any sports as a kid that caused me to keep my baby fat well beyond my baby years. In grade school, when we had to do those presidential physical fitness tests, I generally scored in the bottom percentiles of every activity (with the exception of the “sit-and-reach,” on which I would score off the charts. I guess despite the layer of blubber that endeavored to get in the way, I was really flexible.)
~ Chubby youngster ~
I was first made aware of my weight in first grade when my mom commented that my protruding belly made me “look like I was six months pregnant.” She does not recall telling me this, but it sticks out very clearly in my mind. I remember going to school the next day and looking at all the girls’ stomachs and realized that yes, mine did in fact stick out more than theirs. As the years passed, my penchant for comparing myself to other people did not wane. In every group of friends I have had over the years, I always felt like the “fat friend,” and I hated it.
I never understood why my size 4 friends were on diets or how they could complain about gaining two pounds. I never had to unbutton my pants after a meal because once you have that much fat stuffed into your jeans, another couple pounds of food don’t really make much impact. My friends would think twice about lending me their cardigan if I was chilly because I would probably stretch it out. One night I was hanging out with Sara and a gay guy we had recently met. The two of them decided to swap jeans because the guy happened to have on women’s jeans, and the guy made a pointed comment to me about how I was too large to play along.
~ The fat friend ~
My girlfriends in the city are all very petite and while they are curvy, they are all thin. Going to the beach with them was always embarrassing. I felt like the proverbial beached whale next to a row of dainty mermaids. When I would go out with my friends, I always felt like they were the ones who would be doted on by men. I can’t say if it was because I was heavier, or simply because I was insecure about being heavier, that deterred the admiring throngs, but I often felt like I was on the sidelines.
It didn’t help that so many of my friends are knock-outs. Next to them I feel very, well, average. I have the kind of face that has people asking me all the time if they’ve met me before or telling me that I look just like their cousin. I am not so down on myself to think I am repulsive but I don’t think I am exactly “cute” or “pretty” either, and certainly not “beautiful” or “gorgeous.” I realize that Vanity Fair is not knocking down my door to do a cover for them (especially since I am so very un-photogenic: in every picture of me I have a double chin and red eye).
Despite the fact that my face looks like everybody’s cousin’s, I know what assets I have, and these are the things that have brought me attention from the opposite sex. The high arches of my feet, my shapely calves and my blue eyes have all garnered unprompted comments from male passers-by. But I have one asset that has brought me more attention than any other.
~ I think this skirt was a "Units" piece! ~
I was blessed around the age of eleven to start developing what I have to say are a fine pair of bosoms. When I was young, it was embarrassing. One year for Christmas, my aunt Crystal had made me a set of clothes that mimicked the “Units” brand of clothing (which no one but me seems to remember). It was basically a collection of separates that you could mix and match. One of the pieces was a tube top, and it was too small for me. My aunt joked that I could give it to my mom to wear. It made me feel a little awkward that my chest was quickly eclipsing my mother’s!
By the time I got to college, my chest and I had made peace. My discovery of underwire for support and slight padding to prevent the “smuggling raisins two at a time” look helped me feel more at ease with the girls. I was never uncomfortable with guys commenting on my chest (well, except for this one creepy guy on the street in Paris). Instead I kinda felt, “Well, if they are looking at my chest, maybe they can’t see down past it to my big belly.” Over time my breasts have developed magical powers: the ability to turn ass men in to boob men. I don’t know how or why, but I have heard that claim a number of times and find it quite amusing.
The attention I received from guys went a long way to improving the way I felt about my body. If I couldn’t completely love my body, at least I knew other people appreciated it. I felt resigned to the skin I was in. I mean, no amount of dieting would make my pelvis bone narrower for example. I grew content with the fact that my body was pretty well proportioned: waist smaller than hips, shapely legs, the white girl ass. I relished the fact that I could eat whatever I wanted and just enjoy food, rather than stressing about how many calories were in something. When I found a man who wanted to marry me just as I was, I thought I must have hit the jackpot.
~ Senior Year ~
I reached my heaviest point around our wedding. I had amassed over 160 pounds on my five and a half foot frame, meaning my body mass index (BMI) had edged from simply bordering to firmly in the middle of the “overweight” category on that scale. I had weighed that much once before, during my senior year of college. Between doing out drinking with friends, eating our sorority chef Mike’s delicious cooking, or gorging on multi-ethnic takeout in the newspaper office after staff meetings, my diet choices were not the best. Add to that the stress of a double major, part-time job managing the 24-hour coffeehouse, and holding offices in several extracurricular activities and well, I just ballooned. Luckily the summer after I graduated I spent the summer working in Venice, Italy.
~ In Dublin ~
The lifestyle there is such that you have to walk everywhere and most of what you eat is fresh and healthy. I dropped quite a bit of weight this summer, probably around fifteen pounds, and it stayed off until around the time I met James.
~ Muffin top ~
I didn’t really notice that I had started putting on weight at first. But the next thing I knew I wasn’t fitting into my pants anymore. Admittedly, muffin top is not the sexiest look, and James was quick to remind me of that. He had gained weight too, and again I think about our lifestyle at that time and figure it, like in college, is mostly to blame.
~ Check out the rolls! ~
After James would get off his weekend bartending shift, he and I would go out in Long Island with his friends. After a couple hours of cocktails, we would retire to the local diner or White Castle. At the diner I would regularly get what we affectionately called “Sticks-n-Sticks,” which was a giant platter of fried mozzarella sticks and zucchini sticks. We also joined a Tuesday night billiards league together, which meant another late night and more drinking. All the late nights and empty calories added up. When we weren’t going out, James enjoyed cooking for me. However, his style of cooking was often a heavily sauced stir-fry which undoubtedly was calorie-heavy.
~ Big belly ~
So by the time James blew up at me for eating a piece of cheese, I knew I weighed more than I should. I think it was just the way he approached the situation that really irked me. Rather than be supportive, he was critical. It may sound a little selfish, but if he thought I needed to lose weight so badly, why didn’t he cook healthier foods? He did try to encourage me to exercise, but usually with disastrous results.
Our one rollerblading excursion ended two blocks from home when I completely bit it on a hill. During our one jog he left me in the dust and out of motivation. The one time we played basketball, we had fun until he decided he wanted to shoot around by himself. We played tennis a few times, but as we learned with billiards, competitive sports really weren’t good for us.
So, on my birthday last year I set out to lose the excess weight I had put on. I tipped the scales that day at around 163 pounds. I didn’t have a goal in mind, but what I used to weigh, and what I would have listed on my driver’s license, was 145 pounds, so that seemed to be a good starting off point.
~ 29th Birthday Party ~
On April 8, 2008 I jumped up on the wagon. My experiment with sobriety lasted about a month. James’ friends didn’t understand why I’d suddenly turned into a teetotaler, yet still went out to the bars with them. To be honest, I didn’t trust my husband out on his own. If I had stayed in those Friday and Saturday nights knowing he was out drinking with his friends, I would have probably been on the one hand nervous for his safety and on the other hand really lonely. Don’t get me wrong, we both had our respective girls- and guys-nights out. But I am talking till six am every weekend night. I never would have seen him if I didn’t tag along.
Sober me did just fine in the bar scene, and was a welcome designated driver. And, at the end of the month when I fell back into drinking (it started with “just one”!), I had dropped about ten pounds. I felt so thrilled about it and thought I was looking better too. But James did not notice. We had an argument one night, who knows what about. He was criticizing me about some behavior of mine I brought up my plan and how I wanted to improve my, nay our, lives. James couldn’t register that I had put thought into self-improvement. And he didn’t seem to care. His lack of interest in my efforts was disheartening and I shortly thereafter abandoned my project (until now!).
However, I did meet my original goal of being svelte on my thirtieth birthday. When James told me he was leaving me, I insisted that we go to marital counseling. James had already moved out of our house and into his aunt’s basement apartment. After our counseling session one evening, I returned home and was flipping through the mail. I looked over our cell phone bill (we had a family plan) and was shocked to see hundreds of minutes worth of calls to a New Jersey number. As I quickly came to the realization that the “Jacinta” at the other end of the line was likely a woman he had met and was in fact leaving me for her.
Our next counseling session was not until a week later, and for those seven days my heart did not stop racing. I had never known what was meant by the phrase “my heart felt like it was going to jump out of my chest,” but that’s surely what I was feeling then. And how could I eat when just opening my eyes was too painful. That week, in the process of losing my husband and nearly losing my mind, I also lost another ten pounds.
Over the course of the next several months the weight continued to melt away. Maybe it was my bachelorette suppers of ramen noodles or maybe it was Jared’s subway diet to which I subscribed on many a lunch break. Somehow, without dieting, exercise, or even really trying, another ten pounds melted away. The same pants that had once rendered my midsection into a parody of a baked good were now literally falling off my hips. I tried to belt them, but the holes on my belts didn’t reach far enough to do any good. The bras that I had bought when I put on the weight could not be filled by my smaller chest, and hung off me, sagging and puckered as if they were the breasts of a hundred year old woman.
~ My too-big pants ~
I marveled at my new body, being able to see my ribcage when I bend just so, My stomach flatter than it’s ever been. Even when I pooch it out, I wouldn’t say I look six months pregnant. My collarbone, which I have always thought was an elegant part of my body, has come back to the surface. It makes me happy now to look at myself, and just as happy to look at the scale. The number on the scale on the morning of my thirtieth birthday was thirty-five pounds less than that on my twenty-ninth. I think the last time I weighed less that 130 pounds was in junior high.
~ 30th Birthday - feeling svelte ~
I get a kick out of shopping for clothes now because I have no idea what size I will be. Before I was usually a size 12, with the occasional 10 or 14 thrown in. Now I am a size 6, with the occasional 4 or 8 thrown in. I have never in my entire post-children’s-clothing-life owned an item of clothing that had a size with a single digit. I remember being in sixth or seventh grade and getting hand-me-downs from a neighbor girl who was probably in high school. I rummaged through that bag of clothes and found a fantastic pair of acid washed jeans. I was so upset when I realized I would not be able to zip up her size 8 jeans.
But now, a lifetime later from that awkward teenage self, I probably would be able to rock those tapered monstrosities (and I've heard they are actually in style this season – yikes!). And I hope to not only lose weight but become healthier and more fit by training for a half-marathon in September. That is one of my big goals for the spring. Right now I still don’t feel skinny per se, and I don’t feel all that different, but I feel good. If only James could see me now.
Over time, his actions became increasingly hurtful. He would pinch the roll of fat around my midsection, make comments about my inactivity, and fight me on the foods I ate. One time, I grabbed a slice of individually-wrapped American cheese from the fridge, and he flipped out. He insisted that me eating cheese on its own as a snack was the cause of my gaining weight. It disgusted him, and from that point on he would comment any time I repeated the action. Sometimes I did it just to prove the point that I didn’t care if he thought I was fat.
But in reality, I did care. I have always cared. I came into the world a healthy seven pounds fourteen ounces and started packing on the weight from there. I was always a chubby kid. Perhaps it was the Midwestern meat-and-potatoes diet or the fact that I never really played any sports as a kid that caused me to keep my baby fat well beyond my baby years. In grade school, when we had to do those presidential physical fitness tests, I generally scored in the bottom percentiles of every activity (with the exception of the “sit-and-reach,” on which I would score off the charts. I guess despite the layer of blubber that endeavored to get in the way, I was really flexible.)
~ Chubby youngster ~
I was first made aware of my weight in first grade when my mom commented that my protruding belly made me “look like I was six months pregnant.” She does not recall telling me this, but it sticks out very clearly in my mind. I remember going to school the next day and looking at all the girls’ stomachs and realized that yes, mine did in fact stick out more than theirs. As the years passed, my penchant for comparing myself to other people did not wane. In every group of friends I have had over the years, I always felt like the “fat friend,” and I hated it.
I never understood why my size 4 friends were on diets or how they could complain about gaining two pounds. I never had to unbutton my pants after a meal because once you have that much fat stuffed into your jeans, another couple pounds of food don’t really make much impact. My friends would think twice about lending me their cardigan if I was chilly because I would probably stretch it out. One night I was hanging out with Sara and a gay guy we had recently met. The two of them decided to swap jeans because the guy happened to have on women’s jeans, and the guy made a pointed comment to me about how I was too large to play along.
~ The fat friend ~
My girlfriends in the city are all very petite and while they are curvy, they are all thin. Going to the beach with them was always embarrassing. I felt like the proverbial beached whale next to a row of dainty mermaids. When I would go out with my friends, I always felt like they were the ones who would be doted on by men. I can’t say if it was because I was heavier, or simply because I was insecure about being heavier, that deterred the admiring throngs, but I often felt like I was on the sidelines.
It didn’t help that so many of my friends are knock-outs. Next to them I feel very, well, average. I have the kind of face that has people asking me all the time if they’ve met me before or telling me that I look just like their cousin. I am not so down on myself to think I am repulsive but I don’t think I am exactly “cute” or “pretty” either, and certainly not “beautiful” or “gorgeous.” I realize that Vanity Fair is not knocking down my door to do a cover for them (especially since I am so very un-photogenic: in every picture of me I have a double chin and red eye).
Despite the fact that my face looks like everybody’s cousin’s, I know what assets I have, and these are the things that have brought me attention from the opposite sex. The high arches of my feet, my shapely calves and my blue eyes have all garnered unprompted comments from male passers-by. But I have one asset that has brought me more attention than any other.
~ I think this skirt was a "Units" piece! ~
I was blessed around the age of eleven to start developing what I have to say are a fine pair of bosoms. When I was young, it was embarrassing. One year for Christmas, my aunt Crystal had made me a set of clothes that mimicked the “Units” brand of clothing (which no one but me seems to remember). It was basically a collection of separates that you could mix and match. One of the pieces was a tube top, and it was too small for me. My aunt joked that I could give it to my mom to wear. It made me feel a little awkward that my chest was quickly eclipsing my mother’s!
By the time I got to college, my chest and I had made peace. My discovery of underwire for support and slight padding to prevent the “smuggling raisins two at a time” look helped me feel more at ease with the girls. I was never uncomfortable with guys commenting on my chest (well, except for this one creepy guy on the street in Paris). Instead I kinda felt, “Well, if they are looking at my chest, maybe they can’t see down past it to my big belly.” Over time my breasts have developed magical powers: the ability to turn ass men in to boob men. I don’t know how or why, but I have heard that claim a number of times and find it quite amusing.
The attention I received from guys went a long way to improving the way I felt about my body. If I couldn’t completely love my body, at least I knew other people appreciated it. I felt resigned to the skin I was in. I mean, no amount of dieting would make my pelvis bone narrower for example. I grew content with the fact that my body was pretty well proportioned: waist smaller than hips, shapely legs, the white girl ass. I relished the fact that I could eat whatever I wanted and just enjoy food, rather than stressing about how many calories were in something. When I found a man who wanted to marry me just as I was, I thought I must have hit the jackpot.
~ Senior Year ~
I reached my heaviest point around our wedding. I had amassed over 160 pounds on my five and a half foot frame, meaning my body mass index (BMI) had edged from simply bordering to firmly in the middle of the “overweight” category on that scale. I had weighed that much once before, during my senior year of college. Between doing out drinking with friends, eating our sorority chef Mike’s delicious cooking, or gorging on multi-ethnic takeout in the newspaper office after staff meetings, my diet choices were not the best. Add to that the stress of a double major, part-time job managing the 24-hour coffeehouse, and holding offices in several extracurricular activities and well, I just ballooned. Luckily the summer after I graduated I spent the summer working in Venice, Italy.
~ In Dublin ~
The lifestyle there is such that you have to walk everywhere and most of what you eat is fresh and healthy. I dropped quite a bit of weight this summer, probably around fifteen pounds, and it stayed off until around the time I met James.
~ Muffin top ~
I didn’t really notice that I had started putting on weight at first. But the next thing I knew I wasn’t fitting into my pants anymore. Admittedly, muffin top is not the sexiest look, and James was quick to remind me of that. He had gained weight too, and again I think about our lifestyle at that time and figure it, like in college, is mostly to blame.
~ Check out the rolls! ~
After James would get off his weekend bartending shift, he and I would go out in Long Island with his friends. After a couple hours of cocktails, we would retire to the local diner or White Castle. At the diner I would regularly get what we affectionately called “Sticks-n-Sticks,” which was a giant platter of fried mozzarella sticks and zucchini sticks. We also joined a Tuesday night billiards league together, which meant another late night and more drinking. All the late nights and empty calories added up. When we weren’t going out, James enjoyed cooking for me. However, his style of cooking was often a heavily sauced stir-fry which undoubtedly was calorie-heavy.
~ Big belly ~
So by the time James blew up at me for eating a piece of cheese, I knew I weighed more than I should. I think it was just the way he approached the situation that really irked me. Rather than be supportive, he was critical. It may sound a little selfish, but if he thought I needed to lose weight so badly, why didn’t he cook healthier foods? He did try to encourage me to exercise, but usually with disastrous results.
Our one rollerblading excursion ended two blocks from home when I completely bit it on a hill. During our one jog he left me in the dust and out of motivation. The one time we played basketball, we had fun until he decided he wanted to shoot around by himself. We played tennis a few times, but as we learned with billiards, competitive sports really weren’t good for us.
So, on my birthday last year I set out to lose the excess weight I had put on. I tipped the scales that day at around 163 pounds. I didn’t have a goal in mind, but what I used to weigh, and what I would have listed on my driver’s license, was 145 pounds, so that seemed to be a good starting off point.
~ 29th Birthday Party ~
On April 8, 2008 I jumped up on the wagon. My experiment with sobriety lasted about a month. James’ friends didn’t understand why I’d suddenly turned into a teetotaler, yet still went out to the bars with them. To be honest, I didn’t trust my husband out on his own. If I had stayed in those Friday and Saturday nights knowing he was out drinking with his friends, I would have probably been on the one hand nervous for his safety and on the other hand really lonely. Don’t get me wrong, we both had our respective girls- and guys-nights out. But I am talking till six am every weekend night. I never would have seen him if I didn’t tag along.
Sober me did just fine in the bar scene, and was a welcome designated driver. And, at the end of the month when I fell back into drinking (it started with “just one”!), I had dropped about ten pounds. I felt so thrilled about it and thought I was looking better too. But James did not notice. We had an argument one night, who knows what about. He was criticizing me about some behavior of mine I brought up my plan and how I wanted to improve my, nay our, lives. James couldn’t register that I had put thought into self-improvement. And he didn’t seem to care. His lack of interest in my efforts was disheartening and I shortly thereafter abandoned my project (until now!).
However, I did meet my original goal of being svelte on my thirtieth birthday. When James told me he was leaving me, I insisted that we go to marital counseling. James had already moved out of our house and into his aunt’s basement apartment. After our counseling session one evening, I returned home and was flipping through the mail. I looked over our cell phone bill (we had a family plan) and was shocked to see hundreds of minutes worth of calls to a New Jersey number. As I quickly came to the realization that the “Jacinta” at the other end of the line was likely a woman he had met and was in fact leaving me for her.
Our next counseling session was not until a week later, and for those seven days my heart did not stop racing. I had never known what was meant by the phrase “my heart felt like it was going to jump out of my chest,” but that’s surely what I was feeling then. And how could I eat when just opening my eyes was too painful. That week, in the process of losing my husband and nearly losing my mind, I also lost another ten pounds.
Over the course of the next several months the weight continued to melt away. Maybe it was my bachelorette suppers of ramen noodles or maybe it was Jared’s subway diet to which I subscribed on many a lunch break. Somehow, without dieting, exercise, or even really trying, another ten pounds melted away. The same pants that had once rendered my midsection into a parody of a baked good were now literally falling off my hips. I tried to belt them, but the holes on my belts didn’t reach far enough to do any good. The bras that I had bought when I put on the weight could not be filled by my smaller chest, and hung off me, sagging and puckered as if they were the breasts of a hundred year old woman.
~ My too-big pants ~
I marveled at my new body, being able to see my ribcage when I bend just so, My stomach flatter than it’s ever been. Even when I pooch it out, I wouldn’t say I look six months pregnant. My collarbone, which I have always thought was an elegant part of my body, has come back to the surface. It makes me happy now to look at myself, and just as happy to look at the scale. The number on the scale on the morning of my thirtieth birthday was thirty-five pounds less than that on my twenty-ninth. I think the last time I weighed less that 130 pounds was in junior high.
~ 30th Birthday - feeling svelte ~
I get a kick out of shopping for clothes now because I have no idea what size I will be. Before I was usually a size 12, with the occasional 10 or 14 thrown in. Now I am a size 6, with the occasional 4 or 8 thrown in. I have never in my entire post-children’s-clothing-life owned an item of clothing that had a size with a single digit. I remember being in sixth or seventh grade and getting hand-me-downs from a neighbor girl who was probably in high school. I rummaged through that bag of clothes and found a fantastic pair of acid washed jeans. I was so upset when I realized I would not be able to zip up her size 8 jeans.
But now, a lifetime later from that awkward teenage self, I probably would be able to rock those tapered monstrosities (and I've heard they are actually in style this season – yikes!). And I hope to not only lose weight but become healthier and more fit by training for a half-marathon in September. That is one of my big goals for the spring. Right now I still don’t feel skinny per se, and I don’t feel all that different, but I feel good. If only James could see me now.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Chapter 2: Falling in Love with Narcissus
When I was proposed to on August 18, 2006, it felt like a dream. I was so thrilled to be joining the ranks of the “marrieds,” to have a stable life, a little family (of two, for the time being), and someone who would vow never to leave my side. Yet the notions of playing house, and the actual practice, are two very disparate things. I could say that I wish someone had warned me, but honestly, I wouldn’t have even listened. Heck, maybe some people did warn me. If that is the case, clearly I was not prepared to listen and have blocked their words from my mind.
I am pretty sure that our announcement pretty much shocked everyone. James and I had been dating just shy of six months when he proposed. The two of us had met through a mutual friend in the fall of 2005. Sara was the hostess at the restaurant that I worked at the time and had become my partner-in-crime. Together we would attend a weekly quiz night hosted by one of the other waiters. She started bringing along a friend of hers from college to be on our team.
The first time I saw James, his smile charmed me, and as I got to know him, his knowledge impressed me. He was well versed in topics that we two girls would have had no clue about, like old school hip-hop and sports. He was quirky too, with his penchant for Marx Brothers movies and oldies music. He knew, as did I, that when you say forte to refer to someone’s strengths, it is pronounced “fort.” I think I first impressed him when I identified the CD he was playing in the car one day as Nellie McKay, who at the time was a somewhat obscure chanteuse attending Columbia University. Over time we became friends, and one evening he drove me home, and we kissed. The rest, as they say, is history.
I once told James that if I had initially encountered him on an online dating site, I probably would not have agreed to meet him. He was two years my junior, less one day. He lived in Long Island (a long distance relationship, in my mind) with his parents, so he could finally finish up his bachelor’s degree. The reason for his delayed graduation was the birth of his son, so he had to drop out of school for a time to earn money to support the child and its mother. Lastly, if I had seen his photo on this hypothetical dating site, his photogenic good looks would have likely intimidated me. All of these things, on paper (or “on screen” as this scenario dictates) would have deterred me.
My saying so made James furious despite the reason behind my words, which was: none of those things mattered to me because I got to know him for him and not what he was like on paper. I was trying to show that I acknowledged my prejudices and to say that I was proven wrong. He probably still holds those words against me, as he would frequently reference this exchange in arguments as an example of how critical I was of him. The problem was, and likely still is, that he is a narcissist. Certifiable, diagnosed, capital N, Narcissist. This is a fact I learned well into our relationship, and if I recall James dropped this factoid on me during an argument as an excuse for one of his behaviors or actions.
Wikipedia describes Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) as being “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy.” So as was the case when I said I wouldn’t have dated his online profile, anything short of praise is read as criticism. NPD is, according to Wikipedia, “indicated by five (or more) of the following:”
But I didn’t know all this back when we first met, and I was ready to fall in love, so it may not have made a difference. The guy I had gotten to know week by week at the quiz night had made it so all those hypothetical online profile red flags weren’t important. James was generous with his time (and fuel), driving me home from work or out to see him in Long Island. He would stay in my Manhattan apartment at night and then in the mornings drive about two hours to his university, on the eastern end of Long Island. For the first couple months we were dating, we didn’t pass a day without seeing each other. We were getting along great, and it just felt right as though the Fates, and not Sara, had brought us together.
Around the time of his graduation in May 2006, James officially moved out of his parents’ house and into my apartment. This was a decision, like many more to follow, that he would later say I pressured him into. Between the dorms, the girlfriend & baby, and his parents, James had never lived on his own. He could have gotten his own apartment and gained some desperately needed independence, accountability and sense of responsibility. But at the time, I did not know of his personality flaws and figured since we spent so much time together it would make fiscal sense to shack up together. At this point the notion that we would end up married had been brought up – by James – so I felt living together was the next logical step in the progression. I see now that that jump from his parents’ house to mine meant that my role to him was not that of live-in girlfriend or even roommate, but of Mommy 2.0. James both loves and detests his mother, so that was not a great position to be put in.
I felt for the first time that James did love me when he asked me to go with him to visit his son. Jamie's mother Lisa had moved him to Summerville, South Carolina where they lived with her new husband Erik and their growing family. We went down for Jamie's birthday, in June 2006. Having heard only one side of the story, I was prepared to hate Lisa. The version I heard had her painted as a trashy, loud, mean, cheating, loser who selfishly kept her son from his father but had a “bangin’ body.” When initially confronted with this supposed monster, I was incredibly confused. Who was this quiet, almost meek girl with her beautiful home and military husband? She certainly didn’t look anything like the photos I’d seen of her from years before. Lisa looked, if anything… kind of like me!
We had a great visit primarily because Jamie is just so freaking sweet and adorable. He looks like a miniature version of his father, but with a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose. He is incredibly intelligent and good natured, and has developed evolving passions for Napoleon Dynamite, Sonic the Hedgehog, and most recently Guitar Hero. Over the course of our several visits with him, I don’t think I ever saw him act up or shed a tear. All in all, he was just a joy to be with. So how did he get to be this way with such a “monster” for a mother? Clearly Lisa had done a lot of growing up, in ways her ex-boyfriend, now my boyfriend, had not. I was in love with James though and so was on his side no matter what.
Flash forward to August 18th. I had gone out with my girlfriends during the day and mentioned that I thought a wedding was in the future for us. My recently-engaged friend Cathy got excited to go back on the prowl for jewelry. We started looking at rings on the internet to see what style I might want. I told Cathy that my maternal grandma had given her wedding rings to me for my birthday one year after my grandpa had passed away. I had always hoped to somehow incorporate the stone in a new ring or resize the existing one when I got married.
Upon arriving home that night, James asked me what the girls and I had talked about that day. I mentioned the engagement ring conversation and that I had my Gram's ring. He asked to see the ring, and took it from me to have a closer look. The next thing I knew, James was down on one knee asking me to marry him. In shock and wanting to be sure (in part because we were both a bit tipsy at the time), I kept repeating “For real? For real real?” Every time, he answered “yes.” James told me later that this, much like moving in together, was something I had pressured him into, and that he immediately regretted it upon waking up in the morning. I don’t know if that is just something he said to hurt me, but I do know that I sure as hell didn’t force him down on one knee.
I am pretty sure that our announcement pretty much shocked everyone. James and I had been dating just shy of six months when he proposed. The two of us had met through a mutual friend in the fall of 2005. Sara was the hostess at the restaurant that I worked at the time and had become my partner-in-crime. Together we would attend a weekly quiz night hosted by one of the other waiters. She started bringing along a friend of hers from college to be on our team.
The first time I saw James, his smile charmed me, and as I got to know him, his knowledge impressed me. He was well versed in topics that we two girls would have had no clue about, like old school hip-hop and sports. He was quirky too, with his penchant for Marx Brothers movies and oldies music. He knew, as did I, that when you say forte to refer to someone’s strengths, it is pronounced “fort.” I think I first impressed him when I identified the CD he was playing in the car one day as Nellie McKay, who at the time was a somewhat obscure chanteuse attending Columbia University. Over time we became friends, and one evening he drove me home, and we kissed. The rest, as they say, is history.
I once told James that if I had initially encountered him on an online dating site, I probably would not have agreed to meet him. He was two years my junior, less one day. He lived in Long Island (a long distance relationship, in my mind) with his parents, so he could finally finish up his bachelor’s degree. The reason for his delayed graduation was the birth of his son, so he had to drop out of school for a time to earn money to support the child and its mother. Lastly, if I had seen his photo on this hypothetical dating site, his photogenic good looks would have likely intimidated me. All of these things, on paper (or “on screen” as this scenario dictates) would have deterred me.
My saying so made James furious despite the reason behind my words, which was: none of those things mattered to me because I got to know him for him and not what he was like on paper. I was trying to show that I acknowledged my prejudices and to say that I was proven wrong. He probably still holds those words against me, as he would frequently reference this exchange in arguments as an example of how critical I was of him. The problem was, and likely still is, that he is a narcissist. Certifiable, diagnosed, capital N, Narcissist. This is a fact I learned well into our relationship, and if I recall James dropped this factoid on me during an argument as an excuse for one of his behaviors or actions.
Wikipedia describes Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) as being “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy.” So as was the case when I said I wouldn’t have dated his online profile, anything short of praise is read as criticism. NPD is, according to Wikipedia, “indicated by five (or more) of the following:”
- has a grandiose sense of self-importance
- is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
- believes that he or she is "special".
- requires excessive admiration
- has a sense of entitlement
- is interpersonally exploitative
- lacks empathy
- is often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her
- shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
- An oversensitive temperament at birth
- Overindulgence and overvaluation by parents
- Valued by parents as a means to regulate their own self-esteem
- Excessive admiration that is never balanced with realistic feedback
- Unpredictable or unreliable care giving from parents
- Severe emotional abuse in childhood
- Being praised for perceived exceptional looks or talents by adults
- Excessive praise for good behaviors or excessive criticism for poor behaviors in childhood
- Or maybe I'm just some sort of twenty-first century Job
- …so I could go back to school/Dean's List consistently
- Teachers braggin, "One day, I could say that I taught him"
- Persistent feelin like I was in but always kept at a distance [about friends]
- So they withheld money from me and was strict as could be [regarding his parents during high school]
- Moved my girl in [to his parents’ house]
- 3 schools in 4 years, never got close though I had a few friends
- Got to stay strong to face the heat cause I wasn't #1 in the class
- Attained genius status young, my brain, it was awesome
- An oversensitive temperament at birth [this I can’t speak to]
- [his brother] moved out with his girl and succeeded [thus leaving essentially an only child]
- Parents were dependent, now I'm alone, began makin demands
- Attained genius status young, my brain, it was awesome [according to others]
- So they withheld money from me and was strict as could be
- Emotionally father was fucked, I bottled it up and hobbled along
- Teachers braggin, "One day, I could say that I taught him"
- Forced to be the smartest, eighty-five just wasn't enough
But I didn’t know all this back when we first met, and I was ready to fall in love, so it may not have made a difference. The guy I had gotten to know week by week at the quiz night had made it so all those hypothetical online profile red flags weren’t important. James was generous with his time (and fuel), driving me home from work or out to see him in Long Island. He would stay in my Manhattan apartment at night and then in the mornings drive about two hours to his university, on the eastern end of Long Island. For the first couple months we were dating, we didn’t pass a day without seeing each other. We were getting along great, and it just felt right as though the Fates, and not Sara, had brought us together.
Around the time of his graduation in May 2006, James officially moved out of his parents’ house and into my apartment. This was a decision, like many more to follow, that he would later say I pressured him into. Between the dorms, the girlfriend & baby, and his parents, James had never lived on his own. He could have gotten his own apartment and gained some desperately needed independence, accountability and sense of responsibility. But at the time, I did not know of his personality flaws and figured since we spent so much time together it would make fiscal sense to shack up together. At this point the notion that we would end up married had been brought up – by James – so I felt living together was the next logical step in the progression. I see now that that jump from his parents’ house to mine meant that my role to him was not that of live-in girlfriend or even roommate, but of Mommy 2.0. James both loves and detests his mother, so that was not a great position to be put in.
I felt for the first time that James did love me when he asked me to go with him to visit his son. Jamie's mother Lisa had moved him to Summerville, South Carolina where they lived with her new husband Erik and their growing family. We went down for Jamie's birthday, in June 2006. Having heard only one side of the story, I was prepared to hate Lisa. The version I heard had her painted as a trashy, loud, mean, cheating, loser who selfishly kept her son from his father but had a “bangin’ body.” When initially confronted with this supposed monster, I was incredibly confused. Who was this quiet, almost meek girl with her beautiful home and military husband? She certainly didn’t look anything like the photos I’d seen of her from years before. Lisa looked, if anything… kind of like me!
We had a great visit primarily because Jamie is just so freaking sweet and adorable. He looks like a miniature version of his father, but with a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose. He is incredibly intelligent and good natured, and has developed evolving passions for Napoleon Dynamite, Sonic the Hedgehog, and most recently Guitar Hero. Over the course of our several visits with him, I don’t think I ever saw him act up or shed a tear. All in all, he was just a joy to be with. So how did he get to be this way with such a “monster” for a mother? Clearly Lisa had done a lot of growing up, in ways her ex-boyfriend, now my boyfriend, had not. I was in love with James though and so was on his side no matter what.
Flash forward to August 18th. I had gone out with my girlfriends during the day and mentioned that I thought a wedding was in the future for us. My recently-engaged friend Cathy got excited to go back on the prowl for jewelry. We started looking at rings on the internet to see what style I might want. I told Cathy that my maternal grandma had given her wedding rings to me for my birthday one year after my grandpa had passed away. I had always hoped to somehow incorporate the stone in a new ring or resize the existing one when I got married.
Upon arriving home that night, James asked me what the girls and I had talked about that day. I mentioned the engagement ring conversation and that I had my Gram's ring. He asked to see the ring, and took it from me to have a closer look. The next thing I knew, James was down on one knee asking me to marry him. In shock and wanting to be sure (in part because we were both a bit tipsy at the time), I kept repeating “For real? For real real?” Every time, he answered “yes.” James told me later that this, much like moving in together, was something I had pressured him into, and that he immediately regretted it upon waking up in the morning. I don’t know if that is just something he said to hurt me, but I do know that I sure as hell didn’t force him down on one knee.
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